He charged the new Ambassadors to help bring home investors who will invest in the economy to create jobs for the youth.

He was  speaking during the presentation of letters of credence to the eight Ambassadors at the Flagstaff House.

The Ambassadors are:

1. Papa Owusu [former MP for Sekondi] – Ghana’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom

2. Dr. Adjei Barwuah – Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States of America

3. Ms Anna Bossman [Former CHRAJ boss] – Ghana’s Ambassador to France

4. Mrs Gina Blay – Ghana’s Ambassador to Germany

5. Frederick Daniel Laryea – Ghana’s Ambassador to Cote d’Ivoire

6. Stephen Mahamudu Yakubu – Ghana’s Ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco

7. Alhaji Rashid Bawa – Ghana’s High Commissioner to Nigeria

8. Edward Boateng- Ghana’s Ambassador to China

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By: Sammi Wiafi/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Papa Owusu Ankomah, who’s serving his last term in Parliament, raised the matter at Tuesday’s sitting of Parliament.

The House was meeting for the first time in two months, after a long break.

In an interview with Citi News, the Sekondi MP slammed what he considered as a routine culture of unnecessary delays in determining new pay levels of Article 71 office holders, saying the nation must learn from previous mistakes.

“The way our constitution is formulated, Article 71, it’s like every four years, the President is bound by the constitution to set up certain committees that will recommend to the President and Parliament to determine the emoluments of certain public officers. Now, particularly for those of us within the political class; it is almost always embroiled in controversy because as we speak, the President has not determined the salaries and emoluments of that class of officers including the Chief Justice, Members of Parliament etc; but anytime there is a controversy about it, it is the political that is held responsible.”

“Article 71(2) also talks about Parliament on the recommendations of that committee determining the emoluments of the President, the Vice President, Ministers of State and up till now the report has not come before Parliament so Parliament has not been able to perform its constitutional duty under 71(2).We are being told by the business committee that we are going to sit for just about three weeks so when are we going to get the time to determine it?,” he queried.

The Majority Leader, Alban Bagbin, later responded to the Sekondi MP’s concerns on the floor of the House, saying he will ensure that the legal authority takes up the matter for consideration.

“It is difficult for me to ensure that; but I will definitely consult with the legal authority to make sure that it is brought earlier than we experienced in 2008. In fact, in 2008, it was brought on the last day that Parliament was to rise and we do not want to experience that again and so I will try and follow up on the issue so that it will come earlier. I agree with you that we should have sufficient time to go through the report and then maybe make some input to improve upon on what they would have proposed.”

In January this year, President John Mahama named a five member presidential committee to determine the emoluments of Article 71 office holders. The Committee is chaired by Kwamena Dora Francisca Edu-Buandah.

Other members are Professor Kwamena Ahwoi, Dr. William Baah Boateng, Mrs Norkor Duah and Mrs Lydia Bawa.

It is not clear when the Committee will present its report and recommendations to the President for the appropriate action.

Meanwhile, Speaker Edward Doe Adjaho, has asked both MPs and members of the Executive arm of government to make the best out of this meeting of Parliament in his welcome address to the House.

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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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His threats come after the AU revealed its plans to send about 5,000 troops to the East African nation, without the permission of the government.

The BBC reports that “at least 400 people have been killed and 220,000 displaced since April in Burundi” a situation which drove the AU to make their decision.

However, the Burundian president has warned that his country is prepared to fight if their borders are breached by the AU troops without their consent.

“Everyone has to respect Burundi borders,” Mr Nkurunziza said.

He added that it would be seen as “an attack on the country and every Burundian will stand up and fight against them,” if the AU forces enter Burundi.

Under Burundi’s constitution, foreign troops can only intervene if the warring parties ask for it, or if there is no legitimate government in place, the president said in comments broadcast on state radio.

President Nkurunziza’s announcement that he would seek a third term in office sparked violent clashes in the country with several experts fearing that it could escalate to civil war.

His disputed landslide victory in July’s elections after he survived a coup attempt two months earlier, hasve not done much to endear him to the opposition who feel it’s time for him to step down from office.

By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana/with files from the BBC

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Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi planted the national flag in Ramadi after the army retook the city center from Islamic State, a victory that could help vindicate his strategy for rebuilding the military after stunning defeats.

“Over the past month, we’ve killed 10 ISIL leadership figures with targeted air strikes, including several external attack planners, some of whom are linked to the Paris attacks,” said U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamist group also known by the acronym ISIL.

“Others had designs on further attacking the West.”

One of those killed was Abdul Qader Hakim, who facilitated the militants’ external operations and had links to the Paris attack network, Warren said. He was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Dec. 26.

Two days earlier, a coalition air strike in Syria killed Charaffe al Mouadan, a Syria-based Islamic State member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the coordinated bombings and shootings in Paris on Nov. 13 which killed 130 people, Warren said.

Mouadan was planning further attacks against the West, he added.

Air strikes on Islamic State’s leadership helped explain recent battlefield successes against the group, which also lost control of a dam on a strategic supply route near its de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria on Saturday.

“Part of those successes is attributable to the fact that the organization is losing its leadership,” Warren said.

He warned, however: “It’s still got fangs.”

“EXCITED ABOUT THIS VICTORY”

The Iraqi army’s seizure of the center of Ramadi on Sunday is its first major victory against the hardline Sunni Islamists that swept through a third of Iraq in 2014, and came after months of cautious advances backed by coalition air strikes.

Three mortar rounds landed about 500 meters (0.3 miles) from Prime Minister Abadi’s location during his visit, security sources said. The prime minister was not in danger but was forced to leave the area, they said.

Arriving by helicopter in the shattered city west of Baghdad, Abadi traveled in a convoy of Humvees and met soldiers at the main government complex captured by counter-terrorism forces on Monday, where he planted the tri-color Iraqi flag.

He had announced the visit to Ramadi himself on Twitter and declared Thursday a national holiday in celebration, even though security forces must still remove explosives planted throughout the city and clear out fighters in some densely built-up areas.

Ramadi was the only city to have fallen under Islamic State control since Abadi took office in September 2014.

“He is excited about this victory, because he managed to remove this blot from his historical record as commander-in-chief of the armed forces,” said Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based analyst who has worked with the Iraqi government.

The retaking of Ramadi suggested Abadi’s strategy of heavy U.S. air support while sidelining the Shi’ite militias could be effective. The militias have served as a bulwark against Islamic State but drawn objections from Washington.

“Ramadi is an example that the regular army wishes to promote for upcoming battles of liberation,” Hashimi said.

Coalition spokesman Warren said casualties to Iraqi forces during the battle for Ramadi were in the low double digits. He and Iraqi officials put Islamic State casualties in the hundreds.

Reuters could not independently confirm those estimates.

LONG ROAD TO MOSUL

The government has designated the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, 400 km (250 miles) north of Baghdad, as the next target for Iraq’s armed forces.

But Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters the army would need the help of ethnic Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to retake the largest city under the control of Islamic State, home to rival religious and ethnic groups.

“Mosul needs good planning, preparations, commitment from all the key players,” Zebari, a Kurd, said on Monday in Baghdad.

“Peshmerga is a major force; you cannot do Mosul without Peshmerga,” he said, referring to the armed forces of Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous northern region close to Mosul.

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Source: Reuters

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Kim Yang-gon, 73, was a secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party and was in charge of ties with South Korea.

He was part of a high-level delegation from North Korea that helped ease a stand-off with the South in August, after an exchange of artillery fire.

The state news agency called him Kim Jong-un’s “closest comrade and a solid revolutionary partner”.

“Comrade Kim Yang-gon, a Workers’ Party secretary and member of the party Central Committee Politbureau… died in a traffic accident at 6:15am, Tuesday, at age 73,” KCNA said, without giving details.

It added that Kim Jong-un would lead an 80-member state funeral for Mr Kim on Thursday.

Tension between North and South Korea increased in August when a border blast injured two South Korean soldiers.

Meetings at that time eventually led to the two countries stepping away from a military confrontation.

–

Source: BBC

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The former banker was sworn into office on Tuesday following his victory in November’s elections.

This marks a turning point in the country’s recent political history following the uprising that saw former leader Blaise Compaore step down from power in 2014

The BBC reports that Mr Kabore who was sworn in as thousands cheered, “was an ally of Mr Compaore before the two fell out.”

The ceremony was attended by several African Heads of state including Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama and Former President Jerry John Rawlings.

Almost two dozen soldiers were arrested a day before the ceremony with reports indicating that they plotting to free the jailed leader of the coup in September, Gen Gilbert Diendere.

Mr Kabore said he would defend the constitution and “ensure justice for all”.

By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State’s previous known utterances on the subject, a leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.

The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published.

Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as “part of a joint ownership.”

The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the Islamic State of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.

Far from trying to conceal the practice, Islamic State has boasted about it and established a department of “war spoils” to manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the department on Monday.

In an April report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 female escapees who recounted how Islamic State fighters separated young women and girls from men and boys and older women. They were moved “in an organized and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria.” They were then sold or given as gifts and repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual violence.

DOS AND DON’TS

Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, and issued by Islamic State’s Committee of Research and Fatwas, appears to codify sexual relations between IS fighters and their female captives for the first time, going further than a pamphlet issued by the group in 2014 on how to treat slaves.

The fatwa starts with a question: “Some of the brothers have committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female slaves. These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because these rules have not been dealt with in ages. Are there any warnings pertaining to this matter?”

It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into explicit detail. For example:

“If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off limits to him.”

Islamic State’s sexual exploitation of female captives has been well documented, but a leading IS expert at Princeton University, Cole Bunzel, who has reviewed many of the group’s writings, said the fatwa went beyond what has previously been published by the militants on how to treat female slaves.

“It reveals the actual concerns of IS slave owners,” he said in an email.

Still, he cautioned that not “everything dealt with in the fatwa is indicative of a relevant violation. It doesn’t mean father and son were necessarily sharing a girl. They’re at least being ‘warned’ not to. But I bet some of these violations were being committed.”

The fatwa also instructs owners of female slaves to “show compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her, and not assign her work she is unable to perform.” An owner should also not sell her to an individual whom he knows will mistreat her.

Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old Egyptian center for Islamic learning, said Islamic State “has nothing to do with Islam” and was deliberately misreading centuries-old verses and sayings that were originally designed to end, rather than encourage, slavery.

“Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around,” he said. “Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it.”

In September 2014 more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the world issued an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuting the group’s religious arguments to justify many of its actions. The scholars noted that the “reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam.”

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Source: Reuters

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Ethan Couch, 18, and his mother Tonya were taken into custody in the west coast resort town of Puerto Vallarta.

An arrest warrant was issued earlier this month for Couch after he failed to report to his probation officer.

Couch became known for his unusual defence, which argued his privileged upbringing was to blame for the crash.

Officials in the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office in Texas informed local media of the arrest in Puerto Vallarta.

Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson has said he believes Couch and his mother fled in late November after a video surfaced that appears to show the teenager at a party where people were drinking.

If found to be drinking, Couch’s probation could be revoked and he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

Image copyrightPolice handout

In June 2013, at age 16, Couch was driving drunk and speeding on a dark road when he crashed into a stationary car, killing four people and injuring several others, including passengers in his own pickup truck.

He pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication and manslaughter, and two counts of intoxication assault causing serious bodily injury.

Because of his age, he was not certified as an adult for trial. A judge sentenced him in juvenile court to 10 years’ probation and a stint in a rehabilitation centre.

During the sentencing phase of his trial, Couch’s attorneys argued that the teenager’s wealthy parents failed to instil a sense of responsibility in him – a condition the expert termed “affluenza”.

The condition is not recognised as a medical diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association and was widely ridiculed.

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Source: BBC

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Red Star OS was designed to superficially mimic Apple’s OS X, but hidden features allow it to watermark files and tie them to an individual.

The covert tools were discovered by two German researchers who conducted the analysis over the past month.

They presented their findings at the Chaos Communication Congress on Sunday.

Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schiess pored over the code of Red Star OS version 3.0, which first surfaced online about a year ago.

The system’s coders “did a pretty good job” of mimicking the basic design and functionality of Apple computers, Mr Grunow tells the BBC, but with a twist.

Any files uploaded to the system via a USB stick or other storage device can be watermarked, allowing the state to trace the journey of that file from machine to machine. Red Star can also identify undesirable files and delete them without permission.

‘Far more sophisticated’

The watermarking function was designed in response to the proliferation of foreign films and music being shared offline, says Mr Grunow. “It enables you to keep track of where a document hits Red Star OS for the first time and who opened it. Basically, it allows the state to track documents,” he says.

The system will imprint files with its individual serial number, although it is not known how easily the state can link those serial numbers to individual users.

One element puzzling Mr Grunow is the discovery of an extended version of the watermarking software which he and Mr Schiess do not fully understand, but which he says may help identify individual users.

“What we have seen is the basic watermarking, but we found evidence of an extended mechanism that is far more sophisticated, with different cryptography,” he says.

“It could be that this file is your individual fingerprint and they register this fingerprint to you, and that could help them track down individual users.”

Red Star also makes it nearly impossible for users to modify the system. Attempts to disable its antivirus software or internet firewall will prompt the system to reboot.

Watermarking free speech

The idea for an internal operating system was first conceived by Kim Jong-il, according to Mr Grunow. “He said North Korea must create their own operating system and that is what they’ve done.

“If you look at North Korea, Red Star resembles how the state is operating. It’s pretty locked down, they focus on integrity a lot and they have mechanisms to track users.”

As with many things about the world’s most insular state, the extent to which Red Star is used in North Korea is not known. It is likely installed in libraries and other public buildings, says Mr Grunow, where operating systems can be decided by the state.

Red Star was built using Linux, a free and open-source platform which can be modified at will, and was designed that way to make it as accessible as possible. There is an inherent irony in North Korea’s use of the system, says Mr Grunow.

“They are using a system that was built to promote free speech, and they are abusing it by watermarking free speech,” he says.

More ironic still is the name of the file used by Red Star to hunt for suspicious files on the machine: “The pattern file we found which is used by the so-called anti-virus software is called Angae,” says Mr Grunow.

“That translates to fog or mist – as in, to obfuscate or not be transparent. We have no idea why they picked this name, but it fits, doesn’t it?”

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Source: BBC

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Raids took place on Sunday and Monday in Brussels and the provinces of Flemish Brabant and Liege.

Police seized military clothing and propaganda materials in the raids, but no weapons or explosives.

Belgium has been on high alert since the attacks of 13 November in Paris. Several of the perpetrators are thought to have been based in Belgium.

However, the latest arrests are not linked to the Paris attacks, prosecutors say.

One of those arrested is suspected of leading and recruiting for a terrorist cell.

The suspects are accused of planning attacks against several “symbolic targets” in Brussels, as well as on the police, according to the Belgian broadcaster RTBF.

Propaganda for the so-called Islamic State group was among the materials seized.

In November Brussels was placed under a four-day lockdown closing universities, schools and the metro system, amid fears of a Paris-style attack.

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Source: BBC

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